feeling urges for friend changes / intimacy practice planning / bad dreams / relationship updates

[belenen]

icon: "exuviate (photo of a dragonfly with shimmery green wings after its last metamorphosis, standing next to its previous exoskeleton)"I haven't felt fully seen by someone other than Topaz in a long time and I yearn for that. I don't know if I'm just bad at sharing or if most people have to feel romantic to actually try to see someone or if

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[aubkabob]

I have moved so much in life that it's difficult for me to build lasting relationships. It's gotten to the point where if I don't find myself in regular "forced" interactions with someone, it's extremely hard to cultivate deeper relationships. It's almost as if I give up on friendship easily because I'm so used to a bubble of loved ones dispersing, and although I have wanted to change this, it's a difficult thing to make myself feel as if I'm worthy to ask for interactions. It's never that I don't think that the other person isn't worthy of my precious time, it's more that I don't want to bother anyone (even if they don't see it as a bother). Two landmarks in the last year helped to reinforce this: graduating from nursing school and quitting my retail job of 11 years. While in nursing school, you're in the academic trenches with 47 other people in your cohort and you feel that there's nothing in the world that could keep you from having that connection.... only to graduate and discover that nursing school was the ONLY thing you had in common. My best friend all throughout the two years and I have only seen each other ONCE in the year since we graduated. While we gravitated toward each other then, she worked two nursing jobs and took care of her husband and children while I worked retail while I moved onto my next degree. I keep in regular contact with only one person from my graduating class.

With my retail job, various close friends began to disperse before I finally left. Some were fired, some were let go in the corporate merger, and some found other jobs. In every single one of those situations, their new lives were too different from mine for us to find as much common ground as we did when we could go out for beers and vent about work.

As I entered into a new school for my next level of degree, I had hoped fervently for the same relationships that I had in early nursing school, only to discover that 95% of the work is done online with no face to face interaction.

I ended up looking back at other relationships that had sort of ... ended - not on bad terms but because our lives no longer interacted. Friends that were now married with children. Friends that still want to get incredibly drunk five nights a week. Friends that discovered Cross Fit.

This response has been much more long-winded than I had intended. I just know that I need to realize that I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and -gosh darn it - people like me, so it's okay to be the one to reach out and ask for someone's time and to express how I want to share things with them and to see them in turn, instead of feeling as if I'm intruding in their new lives with their new circle of friends.

Today I started my first job as a nurse, and while I am nervous about being "legit" now, I find myself feeling incredibly at home where I am now and am looking forward to discovering new people in this phase of our lives interacting. It was also a pleasant surprise to find out that SEVEN of my original nursing school classmates are employees, as well. It's nice to have something in common again.

But my dearest James. I love you for all that you are and thank you for including me in your universe.